As I mentioned in the introduction of what inspired
this series, there is one list in particular that stands out. At the beginning
of every school year, some expert or historian comes out with a list of things
that this year’s incoming college freshmen never had the joy of using or
experiencing. A couple things I have seen on this list are 8-tracks, record
players, and corded telephones.
My parents had an 8-track player. I don’t think we
played with it more than once or twice.
I had a record player until my brother decided to
take it apart for some odd reason. I believe the needle disappeared after that.
I used to record 70’s music from my Mom’s 45s onto cassette tapes. A few weeks
ago at work I was singing along to the song “Henry the VIII” and a co-worker
was surprised I knew the song. I replied that it was a song on my Funny Bone
record, then she asked if I was old enough to have records. I laughed. I think
the funnier thing is that I still have most (if not all) of those cassette
tapes!
There was one night at church our Pastor’s son found
a record in the children’s room and asked my brother what it was and if it
would play in a CD player! He had no idea what a record or record player was
and this was about…. 15 years ago…
So as far as the music industry goes, we’ve gone from
8-tracks and records to cassette tapes to CDs, and now satellite radio and
zillions of songs on can fit onto a device the size of a AA battery in the form
of MP3s. Children today will never know the struggle of trying to get a Discman
to fit into your pocket while walking or riding your bike and figuring out how
not to make it skip with every other step or turn of the pedals.
What about videos? I’m not sure if anything besides
reel-to-reel filmstrip was used back in the day… remember watching a
“filmstrip” in grade school with the projectors? I do not really remember much
about a beta player, except seeing the tape and machine once when my brother
attempted to fix one.
Then came those honkingly large VHS tapes in the gigantic
plastic cases. Or setting your blank tapes to record 6 hours and hoping you set
up the timer record properly to record your shows that were on while you
weren’t home, and praying the weather was nice so it didn’t come out fuzzy and
that the antenna was pointed in the right position for that channel to come in
and that the VCR wouldn’t “eat” your tape while recording.
Well, now VHS tapes are becoming obsolete and along
came DVDs in cases half the size. It’s a never-ending project; trying to
upgrade all my VHS movies to DVD, when I can’t even complete that project and
then they come out with bluray! And the DVR, where you can pause and rewind
live tv and record more than one show at a time on two different channels
without the worry of a hungry VCR munching on your tape!
As with the amount of music one can fit on a slim
device and the large VHS tapes slimmed down to thin discs, televisions have
also diminished in size. Just 20 years ago, a television in someone’s living
room was the size of an arm chair. Then they needed to sit on their own piece
of furniture because they were no longer a console but still large and bulky.
Nowadays, a television is so thin it can be mounted right to your wall! And
they are also “smart TV’s” that hook up to the Internet and stream videos and
can basically do everything a computer can do. Who would have imagined a
gigantic console TV could ever transform into a slender computer? It seems that
everything is a computer these days: A television, a computer, a tablet, a cell
phone, an iPod… and too many are glued to their devices 24/7. I got rid of my
smartphone after 3 days… I pay for Internet at home, I don’t need it on the go
also. More about that in a future post.
I will never forget the story I read earlier this year.
A young man on a crowded train in San Francisco had brandished a handgun
several times during his ride, but everyone was so glued to their smartphones
or iPods or Kindles that nobody even realized the man sitting next to them on
the train was showing off a firearm. Until he shot and killed a young male who
was exiting the train.
Think about that. The night I read that story, I
entered the break room at work and noticed the same thing. 10 people in there,
and it was silent. Everyone was staring down at their smartphones or e-readers.
For a split second I pictured someone entering the room and turning it into a
crime scene without anyone noticing until it was too late. The only verbiage I
heard was one asking another to send them a life in Candy Crush.
A real life is what they need, not a virtual one.
